April 27, 2016 UPDATE
Culture Minister resigns; gas prices to be cut in May; Social Democrats banish executive president
Newsroom, 27.04.2016, 12:05
Until May 1st, candidacies for the local elections of June 5th in Romania can be contested. The deadline for political parties, election alliances, ethnic minority organisations and independents to submit their candidacies was Tuesday. The election campaign begins on May 6th and is due to end on June 4th. This is the third time since the fall of the communist regime when a technocratic government has organized elections, after those organised by the Theodor Stolojan Cabinet in 1991 – 1992 and the Mugur Isarescu Government in 1999-2000.
Freedom House Romania released a report on the recovery of losses and seizure of the proceeds of crimes. The NGO says that only one-third of the losses are subject to seizure or lien orders. The report also quotes a provisional assessment by the National Fiscal Administration Agency (ANAF) according to which all the 20,000 enforceable titles registered in Romania account for more than 1.5 billion euros. According to the report, in November last year, a special department was set up as part of the tax authority to enforce final rulings in criminal cases.
The Romanian Culture Minister, Vlad Alexandrescu, announced his resignation on Wednesday via social media. The decision comes against the background of a scandal at the National Opera House in Bucharest, which has seen open conflicts these past few days between the new management, the conductors Vlad Conta and Tiberiu Soare, and the dancer Johan Kobborg, who was in charge with the institutions ballet company. Vlad Alexandrescu is the third member who left Dacian Ciolos technocratic Cabinet in the past two weeks, after the labour minister Ana Costea and the minister for European funds Aura Raducu. A professor at the University of Bucharest and former ambassador of Romania to Luxembourg, Vlad Alexandrescu was appointed Culture Minister in November 2015.
In Romania, natural gas prices for household consumers will be cut by an average 1.5% as of May 1, according to the National Energy Regulatory Authority. The decision comes after natural gas distribution tariffs went down. According to the regulator, the price of imported gas will continue to drop and in the third and fourth quarters of this year it will get lower than the price of domestically produced gas, by an average 10%. The national demand at the moment is around 15-16 million cubic metres per day, and imports reach 1.5 million cubic metres.
The executive committee of the Social Democratic Party, the largest left-wing party in Romania, Wednesday decided to expel Valeriu Zgonea, its executive president and also the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. The Social Democrats will also withdraw their support for Zgonea in Parliament. The decision came after Zgonea demanded the resignation of the Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea, who received a suspended sentence on Friday in an election fraud case. The Court ruled that in 2012, Dragnea, as secretary general of the Social Democratic Party, used a variety of methods to illegally get people to vote in a referendum on the impeachment of the former right-wing president, Traian Băsescu. The referendum eventually failed for lack of quorum.
The Chinese capital city Beijing Wednesday hosted the second edition of a conference entitled Media 2020 staged jointly by Radio Romania and the Chinese national radio station. The conference was a unique debate platform for the 300 representatives of major audio-visual companies from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, America and Australia attending. High on the agenda were talks on implementing the UHDTV systems and the way in which new technologies can help radio stations, which cannot rely on images, to improve the coverage of events around the world. The way in which the digitization of radio stations, journalism and social networking are seen in Asia and Europe, and promoting culture through festivals also represented issues of topical interest for the participants in the Media 2020 conference. The conference ended with a recital entitled “Enescus Violin given by violinist Gabriel Croitoru accompanied by pianist Horia Mihail, at the Concert Hall of the Chinese public radio.
